The original weibo post was re-tweeted almost 90,000 times, received over 18,000 comments and was widely distributed across local media.

"Reading this disastrous news this morning is heartbreaking. I despise this behavior, especially in Egypt -- the place I love. Now, I just want to say 'Sorry' to Egypt," commented weibo user "Net bug jing jing."

"It's a disgrace to our entire race!" said another angry micro-blogger.

In a state-run Xinhua media report, one of the agency's photographers said local Egyptian staff had worked to try to clean the sculpture. While there was some improvement, the graffiti could not be totally removed.

Outbound Chinese tourism has expanded rapidly in recent years. In 2012, Chinese overtook Americans and Germans as the world's top international tourism spenders, with 83 million people spending a record US$102 billion on international tourism.